Since Sep. 11, 2001 security has been a heightened concern of the private sector, all travelers and government organizations. Nowhere has the security been more emphasized than in the airline travel industry. The screening of individual articles of clothing and baggage has now become a priority item for expenditure of government funds and for purchase of new equipment and training of competent individuals.
At the present time airline baggage screening is at an extremely slow process often resulting in passenger delays and frustration on the part of the traveling public. Further, each baggage screening point generally requires two or more people to view images of bags being screened at each screening point. Hence the entire screening process is quite labor intensive.
To make matters worse, the level of screening to be accomplished exceeds the capabilities both in terms of manpower and in training of individuals who are to perform the screen. Thus workers who are tired from working long shifts make mistakes. In addition, poorly trained screeners are rushed into the screening process and make additional mistakes. In addition to all of the above, workers who are screeners understand that their effectiveness cannot really be measured. Therefore their attention to their job tends to be less than optimum.
The current situation with the checkpoint screening of bags is less than satisfactory. Bags are scanned and images are locally displayed, there is no record of the screening action and a local operator of screening equipment must then evaluate the extra images or other types of images that are collected. Given the huge lines that occur in certain airports, operators are rushed and therefore overloaded, or in some cases they are under utilized. While it is possible to use certain sophisticated artificial intelligence image analysis, this only improves the performance slightly at the screening location.
What is therefore required is a system and method for improved baggage screening. Such a method would improve the speed of the screening, decrease man power required for the screening, make metrics available so that worker efficiency and system efficiency can be tested, increase the responsiveness to any potential threats and enable the detection of potential attacks that are in progress.